"This storage capacity is not sufficient to meet the needs of the country," the minister told the National Assembly in a written reply to a question of a member Shaikh Rohale Asghar. He said that the shortage of water is due to: (i) non-development of new large water reservoirs; (ii) sedimentation in existing reservoirs; (iii) increase in population and water demand and; (iv) climate change.
He said that IRSA's Advisory Committee in November 2017 anticipated water shortage of 36% for the Rabi season (October 2017 to March 2018).
He said that as regards the present water storage situation, on 4th April 2018, available storage of water in the three main reservoirs is at its lowest (0.018 MAF) as compared to last year storage (0.506 MAF), average last five years storage (1.421 MAF) and average last ten years storage (0.580 MAF).
Answering to a question about Neelum-Jehulam Hydropower Project, the minister said that the main reasons for delay in the project include, inter alia, significant change in scope of work owed to rock-burst in tunnel area where tunnel boring machine (TBM) 696 was working, shifting of dam axis downstream of its original axis after the studies conducted in view of earthquake of 2005 and introducing steel lining in the tunnel crossing the Jhelum River. He said that the project is presently under commissioning stage whereby the Water Way system pressurization was commenced on 01-03-2018. Generation from its 1st unit is scheduled from 13-04-2018.
He said that the total expenditure including interest during construction and payable retention money/IPCs up to 31-01-2018 is Rs 372.87 billion.
He said that the third revised PC-I of the project was approved by ECNEC on 19-12-2015, at a total cost of Rs 404.32 billion. Now the fourth revised PC-I of the project is under process in the Planning Commission with the estimated cost of Rs 500.343 billion. The increase in cost is mainly due to the escalation in cost of construction, which has increased from Rs 165 billion in the third revised PC-I to Rs 198 billion in the fourth revised PC-I, he said.
He said, "In order to ascertain the responsibility of the increase in cost, an inquiry committee was constituted by WAPDA on the directions of the erstwhile Ministry of Water and Power, which has determined that the increase in cost of the project could have been avoided if the NJHPC/WAPDA would have incorporated Rs 192 billion as the estimated cost of construction provided by the consultant before approval of the third revised PC-I instead of Rs 165 billion."
"In this regard, the inquiry committee fixed the individual responsibilities on the concerned officers/officials of WAPDA/NJHPC, who, allegedly, deliberately failed to include the updated costs of various components in the 3rd revised PC-I and it was perceived by the committee that the then CEO/MD NJHPC Lieutenant-General) Muhammad Zubair (retd), Ex-CFO Abdul Sattar Jajja, ex-Additional CFO Dr Uzma Ikram, ex-Chief Engineer (Contracts) Fareed and Nayyar Alauddin, the then Director (Technical) now PD/CE, had the knowledge of probable increase in cost of works due to revision of already issued variation orders and initiating new variation orders.